Why choose an oil portrait over a professionally done photo

[April Phillips]

Very interesting and excellent, well thought out comments.

Over the holiday I was reading "Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards and this text had another really good answer to what art can bring, that a photo may not be able to. The author explains that there are two ways of seeing and experiencing life, one using the left, analytical side of the brain, and one using the right, intuitive side of the brain. The average (non-artist) person in our society spends most of their time in the left brain and really aren't truely seeing, or experiencing the right side of the brain much at all.

Here's where an artist can help. Viewing an exceptional piece of art "seems to cause a viewer to shift to the artist's mode of seeing" according to Edwards. Photos seem to me a little easier to dismiss as something or someone we've seen/experienced before. Where fine art can take the mind on a nice little journey.

Reading this was a nice "Aha" moment for me.

[Richard Bingham]

Every painter should be aware of the very real, physical differences between what a camera "sees" (and then translates to a 2-D plane) and the physiology of human sight . . . for one thing, we see stereoscopically, i.e., with two "cameras" set at slightly different points of view , and producing over-lapping images. Secondly, that image is "projected" not onto a flat plane of film as in a camera, but onto the hemispherical surface of the retina (kinda like IMAX!). Finally, the processes which include eye movement, selective focus and mental inversion of the projected image result in the visual impressions we call sight.

Interestingly, the eye movement that produces a "composite scan" of what we're looking at results in slight vertically elongated distortion. We actually "see" one another as appearing slimmer than we are in fact, which accounts for the disgust one encounters when photographs "make us look fat".

It's worth noting that as recently as the past century, there were yet primitive cultures who had no experience with photographic images. Invariably, these folks were unable to understand photographs as visual representations of real things . . . they had to "learn" to read them! We, on the other hand, take photographs to be unequivocal "visual truths" . . . is seeing really believing?

[Allan Rahbek]

Look at it this way;
I have never seen a photo that looks like a painting, they always miss by yards.

A painting is build up from elements that the painter sees or chose to see.
A photo is a cropping of what is in front of the photographer, the two methods of building a picture mix like oil and water.

People that mean to praise the painter by telling her that it's almost like a photo...welll

On the other side I believe that the photographer try to be selective and pick the elements, so I could suggest that we, in return, praise their pass time results as almost as good as paintings. Knowing they will never meet the ultimate creation because the photo is only a crop, while we make things up, create.

[Chris Kolupski]

Interesting question that I continue to confront, living in Rochester, NY, where photography and xerography have built the city.

Because photography is so ingrained around here, traditional portraiture has never been as popular as down south. And few pay the fees common in the southern portrait market. Thus, I have focused on smaller, faster portraits painted entirely from life. Surprise is that the 2-3 hour sitting is becoming a selling point precisely because it is so utterly distinct form photography. And people are curious about the painting process.

Portraits from life are a collaboration. My sitter is directly involved in the painting process. They are working for success just as I am. They see the results of their work. They will never forget the sitting. While I am painting them, they often relate the story of another portrait in their home. Sometimes they tell about watching its creation, too. Sometimes they were the one who sat. Always they describe the importance of the portrait to them, and how it will always stay in the family. Photographs stay in the family, too, collecting dust in a box somewhere. The portrait is on the wall and will stay there no matter how many times the family moves. No matter how many generations it passes down to.

My own feelings toward the three oil sketches I painted of my daughter are more difficult to describe and tend toward schmaltz. But there they are, sloppy little sketches painted from life while she slept. One in her bassinet, two at her mother's breast, asleep after feeding. Something about them -and this is where the schmaltz enters -embodies her little life better than any photograph, and we have thousands of photographs of her. Beyond values, drawing, edges, chroma -my daughter is in those sketches.